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Olly Moss kind of pissed at Gearbox

Well this thing kind of blew out of proportions, so I'm going to fix this OP, for posteritys sake and for someone to make an easy wiki trivia post some day.

Who is Olly Moss and why should I care?

Olly Moss is an artist known for his remakes of movie posters in his pretty distinct style that mostly relies on silhouettes of key scenes and figures from the movies. On the games side, he did the pretty nice Resistance 3 cover. Well, nice until they did this to it.

Ok, so what happened?

First there was this tweet:

Referring to this inlay of the Borderlands 2 box art. Kind of seemed a little douchey, he didn't 'invent' the style and is himself inspired by the works of Saul Bass, so I made the thread. However, after a few tweets, it became clear he just meant he would have gladly made the insert himself and wished somebody had asked.

But then someone noticed this:

Which way too direct of a rip, and not ok. Shots fired!

And how was it resolved?

To which Olly replied:

Also, the community manager at Gearbox had this to say:

Chris Faylor, Community Manager from Gearbox Software, here. Want to provide a bit more insight into this unfortunate situation.

First off, thanks to everyone that posted here or in any other way made an effort to bring this to our attention -- as a team that thrives on creative works, ensuring that fellow artists receives proper credit for their work is of utmost importance to us and without your vigilance this may have regrettably slipped by.

The art in question was intended to be an homage to the work of Olly Moss and Saul Bass as a gesture of the deep respect and appreciation the development team has for them and and their work, and was created by a contracted marketing artist. Taking inspiration from the things we love is a big part of our creative process, but the idea of things being outright lifted is not something we condone and the contracted marketing artist responsible for the piece will now be dealing with those consequences.

We have also been in touch with Olly Moss to discuss the matter, and, as part of that, the possibility of future collaborations between Olly Moss and Gearbox Software has come up. While both Olly and Gearbox are very busy at the moment, we're very excited about the possibilities and optimistic about a future collaboration effort.

Saw this tweetAnd this is the image in question:https://twitter.com/MilesJolliffe/status/249105172251414528/photo/1/largeI mean, ripping off artwork is bad and all, but this wasn't done by him, or a not a case of unpaid royalties or whatever (see the image link, he says it there). But I'm pretty sure that despite being popular recently, Mr. Moss didn't invent the silhouette style, and this isn't directly copping of his work. Inspired by him, sure. But I don't see why he should be disappointed to be inspiring a style, especially since he claims to be a Gearbox fan?

but just to be clear... he didn't do that artwork and they just used it right? This is another artist that just did a similar style. If so, that's pretty dumb to get upset about. He has trademarked silhouettes?

I guess the color scheme is somewhat similar to his Resistance 3 boxart but... still it's stretching to say they ripped him off.

edit: Oh yeah, his Star Wars posters. I see the relation more strongly now... still I see no problem.

@Azteck: Well he has lately been known for his style and doing remakes of old movie posters (kind of ironic, no?), you can see them in the Tested videos of Norms house, and so on. But that claim kind of suggests he "invented" the style or whatever. His work looks really nice though http://ollymoss.com/

Yeah okay. As if he was the first person, or the last person, to use a silhouette like that. If he's upset that it's similar to his Star Wars posters, I'm sure the hundreds of people on Deviantart who probably do the same style are upset that his Star Wars posters copied them.

Well from reading the rest of his tweets it seems OP is not being fair. He doesn’t seem pissed he sounds like he would have loved the chance to work with a developer he likes, not pissed they copied more sad they did not ask for him. Now that does sound a little up his own arse to be fair but still, if i had a signature style in anything and someone went out and get a similar one because the style I was known for was popular I would be a little sad to.

@Ekpyroticuniverse: yeah, his last few tweets kind of backpedal and say he's dissapointed because he would have loved to do the work himself, but the first tweet kind of made it look like they had ripped him off somehow. Shouldn't post first emotions to twitter, I guess. (Or make forum threads about said tweets :) )

@PeZ: Oh him! Yeah I know his stuff but it's hardly groundbreaking, certainly not enough for him to have any problem with Gearbox emulating it. Hell, they might not even know he exists for all he knows. Seems kind of like he's just looking for reasons to be annoyed if that is the battle he chooses.

@Ekpyroticuniverse: yeah, his last few tweets kind of backpedal and say he's dissapointed because he would have loved to do the work himself, but the first tweet kind of made it look like they had ripped him off somehow. Shouldn't post first emotions to twitter, I guess. (Or make forum threads about said tweets :) )

Just because he doesn't have the "rights" to that style does not make it okay for them to blatantly rip it. And they definitely know who he is, he did the cover for resistance 3 and has done a lot of video game related work. There's a difference between them doing something "inspired" by him or "similar in style" and just straight jacking his stuff, which is what this is. Right down to the colour scheme and composition. Stealing assets just makes it even worse.

I think the tweet should have read "I'm a huge gearbox fan and I'm glad to see an homage to my work in the game."

Actually, it should be "I'm a huge gearbox fan and I'm glad to see an homage to my work in the game though I'm disappointed I didn't do it. Hit me up me for BL3!"

My only criticism about the BL3 work is that sky should have had a different zig-zag pattern to it. It is too similar to the ESB poster. Gearbox definitely should have pursued him for doing artwork for BL2 but if he was out of their budget then I feel that it's okay to get an artist to replicate his style. That's how the graphic design world works sometimes.

I like Olly Moss's work but the notion that he somehow owns the silhouetted 'style' is ridiculous. That would be like if a band claimed they owned drop D tuning or double bass or something.

Now, referring to the picture in this post: @VilhelmNielsen said:

As you can see here, they straight lifted assets from one of his posters. I'm siding with mr. Moss on this one, it's kind of a dick move.

He totally has a right to be upset about the sky being a direct fucking copy, if that's what he's actually referring to (and I'd have to imagine it is). But if he's only upset because "Hey the style of their poster looks like that thing I did!" then he's full of himself.

Hey guys. People keep saying that he didn't create the sillouhette style. Can somebody show me an example of a poster that has a white background, uses the outline of a main character, and then uses portions of the movie/game/whatever to create the facial features of the main outline, that was done before Olly Moss? Even if you can show me that, they still used a part of his image. In my opinion, Moss is completely in the right.

@PeZ: Because artists are the most insecure people on the planet, even more so then musicians. Also, money money money money money money.

That is so true. Artists probably make even less money than musicians, given their talent is all they have... but honestly, in an age where there are thousands of aspiring art college student out there, we're going to see at least 200000 Olly-inspired works in the next 5 years on DeviantArt. I think it is great that one can be inspiring the next generation of art, and not being a douche like Apple.

Hey guys. People keep saying that he didn't create the sillouhette style. Can somebody show me an example of a poster that has a white background, uses the outline of a main character, and then uses portions of the movie/game/whatever to create the facial features of the main outline, that was done before Olly Moss? Even if you can show me that, they still used a part of his image. In my opinion, Moss is completely in the right.

They can't because people on the internet would much rather yell "derp fuck this guy" than actually have any idea what they're talking about.

I don't think Gearbox can be faulted for this as they can't be reasonably expected to know where all their many artists are getting all their many assets. This is one artist's fault who was too lazy to draw his own sandy road. Gearbox paid that person when they should have been paying Moss.

@Damian I think the problem with Gearbox in this situation, is that chances are somebody higher up said "Make something that looks like it was made by Olly Moss". I'm assuming that a random artist at Gearbox didn't decide by himself to use this style.

@Damian I think the problem with Gearbox in this situation, is that chances are somebody higher up said "Make something that looks like it was made by Olly Moss". I'm assuming that a random artist at Gearbox didn't decide by himself to use this style.

Sounds about right. Happens all the time at my work and being on a very limited schedule at my current job it's sometimes hard to be original. Still, the artist can't trace someone's artwork cuz that sky just looks straight up copied.